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Microsoft's Skype Drops Modern App In Favour of Old-Fashioned Win32 App
mikejuk writes: Microsoft, after putting a lot of effort into persuading us that Universal Apps are the way of the future, pulls the plug on Skype modern app, to leave just the desktop version. Skype is one of Microsoft's flagship products and it has been available as a desktop Win32 app and as a Modern/Metro/WinRT app for some time. You would think that Skype would support Universal Apps, there are few enough of them — but no. According to the Skype blog: 'Starting on July 7, we're updating PC users of the Windows modern application to the Windows desktop application, and retiring the modern application.' Microsoft is pushing Windows 10 Universal Apps as the development platform for now and the future, but its Skype team have just disagreed big time. If Microsoft can't get behind the plan why should developers? (Also at Windows Central and VentureBeat.)
This seems particularly weird given that Microsoft has devices where (with, no doubt, a painful list of 'write once, port everywhere' caveats) 'Modern' is the option. Windows RT was the first stab, though it dragged along win32 for Office; but it's dead and irrelevant. Windows Phone, though, unless also headed for the chopping block, is presumably still going to have Skype, and it isn't slated to get win32 any time soon.
Is the dogfood really so dreadful that they'd terminate the metro version on every device that has full windows available, despite the presence/absence of touchscreen, design favoring conventional or tablet-style use, and so on?
The limited APIs and strict sand-boxing on universal apps limits the amount of actually useful software you can write for it. "Universal" really means lowest common denominator between our phone and desktop os. If all you care about running on your computer is cut the rope and angry birds then its fine. If you want an actual full featured computer... not so much.
Universal Apps have a permission system, like Android. That means that, with a little tinkering, an app like Skype can be configured to work properly yet still have no privacy-violating access to parts of your computer it has no business being in.
But a full-blown Win32 app isn't restricted in the same way - or at least, preventing it from behaving maliciously is a lot harder. As a datamining tool, a Win32 app is far, far more valuable than an app.
In case people have forgotten, the Skype team was working with the NSA long before Microsoft acquired them. This decision should surprise no one.
It's Microsoft's biggest asset (as well as client/server development platforms). Just because somebody else seems to be doing well in the mobile space, why does Microsoft see a need to translate that into ruining one of the good things going for them? If Microsoft trashes the desktop PC they do so at their peril. And I say this as an avid Mac user at home and Win8/.NET/SQL Server developer at work. The vast majority of 5 x 7 workers are NOT going to be productive with a tablet. They ARE going to be productive on "traditional" desktop computers (whether they use apps in a web browser all day or not).